Sully as a Three-Year-Old

I was playing "checkup" with Sully the other day. The game is like this: I sit in the waiting room (the kitchen) while he types on his computer (the chair in front of him) and then he calls me into his office (the living room) and asks what's wrong with me. I usually lead with something like, "My stomach hurts."

So there we are, sitting across from each other in his office, and he's tapping away on his computer, and he leans back in his seat and rests his heels on the floor, hands folded across his chest. "What's wrong with you, Mom?"

"My stomach hurts."

He furrows his brow, leans in; he's seen his share of doctors this year, you can tell. He asks, "Do you have a heart murmur?"

"Yes," I say, "I probably do." (One of his best friends has a murmur, had to go to the hospital and watch his heart on a TV screen, and Sully talks about it constantly.)

"Ah," he says. "Okay. And do you have a broken infection in your hip?"

"Yes, that too," I say, nodding pathetically (he had an infection in his hip this summer and was crippled for a few days, so that comes up often as well).

He types something on his computer, looks at me again, and goes, "And did someone stab you with a knife?"

Uh.

Wha...

Mm...

Kids grow up so fast these days.

Speaking of, he's turning four next week. I feel like the thing to say is, "Wow, that went so fast!" and, "Where did the time go?" and, "But he was just born yesterday!"

But really, it's hard to remember life before he came along, like it's a movie I saw four years ago instead of, you know, my actual life. It's even kind of hard to remember life with a newborn baby or to remember him as a two-year-old. I don't mean this in a bad way, but the past four years have just kind of felt like...four years. That's not a lot of time, but it's a lot of time. He's done about four years' worth of changing and growing which, in adult years, is more like forty.

That's not to say I don't ever dig my heels in and get sad about him growing up or feel like I want to pause him right where he's at and keep him there forever. But every time I think he's at my favourite stage, he gets a little older and develops some new skill, is able to express himself better, gets even funnier and cooler, and I'm beginning to sense a pattern. Maybe we're on a good trajectory here and I should stop worrying about the passage of time and just ride it out.

Just kidding, I'll always worry about the passage of time. Forever and ever. I will never not be sappy and weepy and schmaltzy.

But that's what blogs are good for, right?

So on this, the first day of the last week of Sully as a Three-Year-Old, I'll take this memory down:

He's sitting beside me building a LEGO car while I write. He's mostly quiet, except for when he figures something out that has been stumping him ("Oh! This piece goes HERE!"). We're listening to "I Just Don't Think I'll Ever Get Over You" by Colin Hay. The rest of the house is silent except for the furnace. Sully's humming along to the music and I suddenly realize I am too.

I say, "This is one of my favourite songs." I turn it up a bit.

He says, "What's it called?" I tell him, and he goes, "Hm. It is a good song. I like it too."